I don’t know San Diego’s Balboa Park well enough to identify the Featured Image‘s exact location. Metadata and Google Maps indicate the Lily Pond, so let’s assume that to be correct.
The ducks made quite the splash when I came upon them on April 20, 2023. I used Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra to shoot the quackers. Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 50, 1/2000 sec, 70mm (film equivalent); 4:08 p.m. PDT.
I may regret the Featured Image tomorrow, but it looks pretty good tonight. Admission: My judgement cannot be trusted. Today’s routine eye exam included the dreaded dilation, which blurs my vision. My ability to appropriately assess composition or image quality is unreliable.
The wicked, but temporary, enlargement of my pupils obliterated any meaningful outdoor routine until early evening under a Marine Layer that never lifted. By 7:32 p.m. PDT, with sunset officially 14 minutes away, deep dusk had already set in when, finally walking, I passed the white rose bushes.
Our daughter’s best friend received the phone call that she was in an ambulance and hospital bound on March 2, 2023. She was discovered in severe distress during the late afternoon. Her heart stopped enroute, and she suffered cerebral anoxia—meaning no oxygen to the brain. The trauma unit quickly cooled her body; the term is therapeutic hypothermia.
Two hours later, paramedics wheeled in another patient suffering similar situation. He didn’t make it. I later learned that ICU staff rallied for our daughter after losing the other patient. But she was completely unresponsive for the first two full days. “It has been found that only about 12 percent of patients who have been comatose for more than six hours after a cardiac arrest make a good recovery”, according UK-based brain injury association Headway. That statistic might in part explain why we were offered option to suspend treatment and let our only child pass away—on her second day at the hospital.
Consider the Featured Image as start of a two-parter. The intended subject of the street shot is the big guy hanging on to a lamppost, and I had planned to close-crop on him. But just as I clicked Leica Q2 Monochrom‘s shutter, someone scooted into the frame. The unintentional photobomber instead makes the moment.
Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/1600 sec, 28mm; 3:11 p.m. PDT, April 20, 2023. Location: San Diego’s Balboa Park.
I want you to click “Birds on a Wire” and compare to the Featured Image. See the differences between what a camera can produce versus that of a smartphone. The 2018 close crop comes from Leica M (Typ 262) and Summarit-M 1:2.4/50 lens. The newer shot, taken yesterday, is a product of Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra‘s 10x zoom. Vitals: f/4.9, ISO 50, 1/1250 sec, 230mm (film equivalent); 12:04 p.m. PDT; composed as captured.
If I had to choose, no brainer: 50mm cropped from the rangefinder versus 230mm from the mobile. The S23 Ultra’s tiny sensor, for all the software computational magic, can’t compete with the full-frame shooter—at least in a situation where I expected telephoto reach to be meaningful asset.
Not for the first time, car horn-honking, chanting, cheering, and clapping beckoned me to the administrative offices for San Diego Unified School District, which is but a few blocks from our University Heights apartment.
I came upon a sizable protest of people dressed in red T-Shirts. The number could have been in the thousands—size the Featured Image and companion don’t capture in part because the crowd spread out some distance. They jam-packed when marching, too. Vitals, aperture manually set for both: f/8, ISO 100, 1/250 sec, 28mm; 4:23 p.m. PDT; Leica Q2.
I picked poor time to go to Trader Joe’s for organic whole milk—as you can see from the Featured Image, which comes from Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. Vitals: f/1.7, ISO 16, 1/160 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 4:54 p.m. PDT, yesterday.
Meanwhile, I prepare for a different outage calamity. Today, my webhost sent the dreaded, but expected, email that this site will, ah, migrate with 24 hours. I have no choice about the matter, and no amount of assurances about safe, seamless, and sure migration instills me with confidence that catastrophe isn’t imminent.
Let’s start with a Happy Mother’s Day to the moms. Some of you work the holiday, as does this woman at her gift stand set up in my San Diego neighborhood of University Heights. She and her husband greeted me yesterday, and I had every intention of returning to buy flowers for my wife. But I waited too long. The lady sold out, and they were packing up when I arrived this afternoon.
I used Leica Q2 to take the Featured Image, which (sigh) is presented as composed, because I could create no crop that wouldn’t take too much context from the photo. Maybe you see something that I don’t. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/500 sec, 28mm; 12:36 p.m. PDT.
In April 2016, I started to write “Why is Hollywood Obsessed with Viral Armageddon?” In June 2017, I shot a photo to illustrate the post, which wasn’t finally finished until March 2021—nearly a year after the World Health Organization declared SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 to be a pandemic.
San Diego’s Museum of Us exhibit “Cannibals: Myth & Reality” must be ongoing because I came upon the same sign still in place six years later—as you can see from the Featured Image, captured using Leica Q2 Monochrom, on April 20, 2023. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 200, 1/160 sec, 28mm; 3:23 p.m. PDT.
Remember this: “The Teardown“, from February 2022? Where was a home and a few trendy shops, another multi-unit monument to more unaffordable housing rises along Park Blvd between Howard and Polk. By the strictest map boundaries, the location is in the community of University Heights. But because of zip code, someone will claim San Diego’s Hillcrest.
Vantage for the Featured Image is parallel street Georgia. I count four stories and rising. Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 50, 1/8800 sec, 70mm; 2:22 p.m. PDT, today; Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Forgive my Gazania obsession, please. The flower observed languishing on April 29, 2023 has turned to fluff (can you say seedlings) and new buds burst in its place. You must understand that these orange lovelies took root on their own; they were not planted by the apartment complex’s gardener/landscaper. I am delighted by their presence.
I used Leica Q2 to capture the Featured Image, today. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/5.6, ISO 100, 1/320 sec, 28mm; 3:22 p.m. PDT. A second shot, using the camera’s dedicated Macro mode, misplaces the focal point; otherwise, I would have shared that one instead.
The never-ending pattern of eviction, renovation, or teardown and rebuild provides temporary residences for San Diego’s homeless. I had wondered why encampments suddenly vanished along either El Cajon Blvd or Florida Street here in University Heights. The so-called unhoused moved into unoccupied flats.
What a sad, tragic state of affairs across from Kindred Hospital on Georgia Street. Around the beginning of the year, a woman living in a charming Craftsman-like house had to leave, because the property had been sold for redevelopment. I once chatted with her about renovictions and calico Rosie. Renters of the apartments next door were forced out some months later. I had photographed ginger kitty Harvey there in June 2021. Both animals appear in my “Cats of University Heights” series.